and pink ribbons in a stereotyped attitude of despair on a divan.

Conscience is supposed to make cowards of us all, but it is a matter of
common experience that the unimaginative are made cowards of only by
being found out.

Had David qualms of conscience when Uriah fell before the besieged city?
Surely if he had he would have winced at the obvious parallel of the
prophet's story about the ewe lamb. But apparently he remained serenely
obtuse till the indignant author's "Thou art the man" unexpectedly
nailed him to the cross of his sin.

And so it was with Lady Newhaven. She had gone through the twenty-seven
years of her life believing herself to be a religious and virtuous
person. She was so accustomed to the idea that it had become a habit,
and now the whole of her self-respect was in one wrench torn from her.
The events of the last year had not worn it down to its last shred, had
not even worn the nap off. It was dragged from her intact, and the shock
left her faint and shuddering.

The thought that her husband knew, and had thought fit to conceal his
knowledge, had never entered her mind, any more than the probability
that she had been seen by some of the servants kneeling listening at a
keyhole. The mistake which all unobservant people make is to assume that
others are as unobservant as themselves.

By what frightful accident, she asked herself, had this catastrophe come
about? She thought of all the obvious incidents which would have
revealed the secret to herself--the dropped letter, the altered
countenance, the badly arranged lie. No. She was convinced her secret